— Faye Burgess knows all too well what a product marketed as bath salts, but used in a way that has nothing to do with soaking in a hot tub, can do.

In a span of three short months, the Orange County resident watched the substance wreak havoc in her home life.

Burgess said she would snort the bath salts, while others would mix the substance in their favorite beverage.

The first time she tried bath salts was right before Christmas, and it had an immediate effect.

“For me, it intensified everything,” she continued. “Whether it was light or noise. Especially noise. I felt like I heard everything.”

Her use was not an isolated case.

“I knew a few people who were already doing it, and they said it gave you lots of energy,” Burgess explained. “It was like you were ‘speeding.’ It felt good at first.”

Burgess said at first she used the bath salts once a week, but as time passed so did her need to use the salts.

“When you were actually doing it, it made you want more, but I never felt like I had to have it,” she said. “But when I started to go without sleep for a couple of days at a time is when the real problems started.”

Sold in some convenience stores, tobacco shops, and over the Internet, the product and others like it have come to the attention of local, state and federal lawmakers.

“We know it is a problem in our community and in the workplace too,” Mitch Woods, Jefferson County Sheriff, said.

Local law enforcement began seeing problems associated with people smoking organic incense and bath salts a couple of years ago. The challenge has been that the products are not illegal, though in some cities such as Port Arthur, the sale is illegal, Woods said.

Chemicals found in the organic incense mimic the main ingredient in marijuana. The chemical is often sprayed on herbs and sold to be burned as incense or smoked.

If state lawmakers are successful in passing legislation this session, products sold as organic incense will soon be banned from store shelves.

Last week the Texas Senate voted to ban synthetic marijuana products sold under the guise of innocuous names such as K2, Spice, Genie and Fire and Ice. 

Penalties for those selling or manufacturing the organic incense would range from a misdemeanor to a felony under the Senate Bill passed Wednesday.

The bill now goes to the House, where a similar measure is pending. If ultimately passed into law, Texas would join 16 other states with bans on synthetic marijuana. The Texas measure is expected to be among the toughest in the nation, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The Senate bill would make the manufacture and sale of the drugs a felony. The penalty for possession would track current law covering marijuana, with a misdemeanor for having small amounts and larger amounts resulting in felony charges and a possible prison sentence, the AP reported.

There is currently no bill moving forward in the state legislature to address the sale of compounds sold in the bath salts.

At a recent community outreach forum sponsored by the Industrial Safety Training Council, the topic of synthetic drugs and their dangers was addressed.

Compounds in the synthetic marijuana were originally created for medical reasons, Loretta Anderson, chief executive officer with ExperTox Laboratory in Houston, said at the forum.

Beginning in 1984, Dr. W. Huffman and his team of researchers began developing cannabinoid compounds to aid in research of multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and chemotherapy. About 20 years later two of the compounds started being sold as a legal alternative to marijuana.

The fad escalated about five years ago in Europe and quickly became an epidemic, before European officials made the products illegal.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has banned five of the compounds used in the incense. The ban will go into effect in June 2011. Texas’ proposed law will ban 11 compounds used in the organic incense. That bill is expected to pass and go into effect in Sept. 2011.

Anderson said most of the compounds are produced in labs with no quality control. Kits can be purchased over the Internet, manufactured and marketed quite easily.

In 2010, the American Poison Control reported 1,882 calls to their hotline regarding the synthetic drugs. As of February, 2011, 706 calls had been reported. There have been as many as eight deaths resulting from the suspected use of the incense products in Texas.

“The product is not illegal, but does change behavior,” she said.

ExperTox Lab in Houston, is among a handful of laboratories set up to test for the compounds, she said.

Woods said the problem is far-reaching and effects kids and public safety in the workplace.

“Law enforcement is stopping folks that are so impaired by this stuff,” he said. “We are rapidly trying to get behind and pass this legislature.’

Woods said Port Arthur is the only area city that has passed a city ordinance prohibiting the sale of these products in local stores.

The federal law is more geared toward the manufacturer, and not the user, he said.

“They set their levels so high, it makes if very difficult for us to use this to make an arrest,” Woods said.

Since lawmakers initially started taking steps to outlaw the organic incense, the bath salts fad has increased.

According to Woods, the bath salts, often packaged under names such as “White Lightening,” are packaged in a small jars and warn “not for human consumption.”

People are using the salts much like methamphetamine or cocaine. They can be snorted, or broke down and smoked.

Abuse in area workplaces is so severe that vacuum trucks servicing Port-a-Potties are complaining about their lines clogging from discarded jars, Woods said.

Like crystal meth, bath salts can produce paranoia and hallucinations — side effects that Burgess remembers well.

“I never snapped it had become a problem because I was just so wrapped up in it,” she said. “Time would go by real, real fast. I completely lost a day one weekend. I have no memory of it at all.

“The worst part was when I started hallucinating,” she said. “I thought there were lights in my car, like someone was using laser lights in it. I never wanted to go anywhere because of that.”

Once Burgess decided to no longer use the bath salts, she started experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

“I couldn’t get enough sleep afterwards,” she stated. “It was like I felt non-stop exhaustion, but I wasn’t doing anything to be that tired. It even made me sick at my stomach for a while.

“The whole first week I knew, in my mind, that I didn’t want it, but my body did. It wanted that extra boost of energy. Now, I don’t want it at all.”

Various stores offer these type of products. Some are aware of the potency of the bath salts and have become selective in who they allow to purchase it, she said.

“There were a few stores I would go to get it,” she added. “But one store wouldn’t sell it to you unless they knew you.”

Burgess said she wanted to share her story in hopes of helping someone else who might be battling this problem.

“There are a lot of people doing this, and I mean a lot,” she said. “But it needs to be outlawed. If it does this to me, an adult, what will it do to a teenager? It’s too easy for people to get, and that’s bad.”

skoonce@panews.com

tmann@orangeleader.com